I had a great discussion today with a colleague who’s a coach for Agile Teams. If you’re in high tech, you probably know that Agile is a relatively new methodology which helps teams to deliver products which are much closer to addressing customers’ true needs. It can be quite powerful.
We were talking about what really makes a team powerful. It’s a critical question, because we’ve lost our sense of what “team” means.
We no longer have groups, we have teams. Leadership teams. Project teams. Cross-organizational teams. SWAT teams. Teams to plan Friday’s lunch.
But let’s get real. What makes a team useful is that it can do far more than the individual. 1+1=3. 1+1+1=8. 1+1+1+1+1=60.
How often does that happen? It’s much more common that 1+1=1.1, because the rest of it is lost with meetings, overhead, disagreements, positioning, and games.
If all you’re getting is 1+1=1.1, then don’t bother. Let those two people go off doing different things, because you’re not really getting much value in them working together.
I can throw around these numbers all day and they might sound interesting, but what does a 1+1=3 team really look like?
- They find solutions that are better than any individual would have come up with.
- They identify and resolve their own issues, reducing the management load rather than increasing it.
- They deliver more than the customer and organization was asking for, without creating problems or running over budget.
- They create energy by working together.
Managers sometimes have trouble seeing these teams, but ask the employees. Your employees are attracted to these teams because they get useful stuff done and have fun doing it.
And I hope that you’re rewarding your 1+1=3 teams using 1+1=3 math!
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